Ilya & Emilia Kabakov
1933 - 2023
Born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (), lives in US.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are ex-Soviet, American-based artists who collaborated on environments which fuse elements of the everyday with those of the conceptual. While their work is deeply rooted in the Soviet social and cultural context in which the Kabakovs came of age, their work still attains a universal significance.
Ilya Kabakov (1933-2023) was born in Dnipropetrovsk, the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union. He studied at the VA Surikov Art Academy in Moscow, and began his career as a children's book illustrator during the 1950s. He was part of a group of Conceptual artists in Moscow who worked outside the official Soviet art system. In 1985, he received his first solo show exhibition at Dina Vierny Gallery, Paris, and he moved to the West two years later, taking up a six months residency at Kunstverein Graz, Austria. In 1988 Kabakov began working with his future wife Emilia (they were to be married in 1992). From this point onwards, all their work was collaborative, in different proportions according to the specific project involved. Today, Kabakov is recognized as the most important Russian artist to have emerged in the late 20th century. His installations speak as much about conditions in post-Stalinist Russia as they do about the human condition universally.
Emilia Kabakov was born in Dnipropetrovsk, Soviet Union, in 1945. She attended the Music College in Irkutsk in addition to studying Spanish language and literature at the Moscow University. She immigrated to Israel in 1973, and moved to New York in 1975, where she worked as a curator and art dealer. Emilia has worked side by side with Ilya since 1988.
Their work has been shown in such venues as the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Documenta IX, at the Whitney Biennial in 1997 and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg among others. In 1993 they represented Russia at the 45th Venice Biennale with their installation The Red Pavilion. The Kabakovs have also completed many important public commissions throughout Europe and have received a number of honors and awards, including the Oscar Kokoschka Preis, Vienna, in 2002 and the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, Paris, in 1995.
Items
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Ilya Kabakov - Schiff (In...
Ilya & Emilia Kabakov , Ilya Kabakov - Schiff (Installation 1986), 1989. Book, ink, paper, 24 x 16.6 cm, 29 p., softcover leporello, language : German, authors : Claudia Jolles & Ilya Kabakov, publisher : Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich.
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Charles Rosenthal, Im Par...
Ilya & Emilia Kabakov , Charles Rosenthal, Im Park 1930, 1998. Installation, oil on canvas, wooden box, lamp, 77 x 132.2 x 16.4 cm.
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A Meeting / Vstrecha
Ilya & Emilia Kabakov , Jan Fabre, A Meeting / Vstrecha, 1997. Performance, 00:35:00.
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Ilya Kabakov "Que sont ce...
Ilya & Emilia Kabakov , Ilya Kabakov "Que sont ces petits hommes?", 1989. Book, ink, paper, 22.5 x 34 cm, language : Russian, French, English, publisher : Galerie de France, Paris, ISBN : 2-902406-32-0, layout by Ilya Kabakov.
Events
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The Collection XXI
01 December 2007 - 10 March 2008.
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EURASIA − A Landscape of ...
08 October 2021 - 23 January 2022.
Alighiero Boetti, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Babi Badalov, Basir Mahmood, C. K. Rajan, Cevdet Erek, Damian Le Bas, Deimantas Narkevičius, Elena Voro -
Museum in Motion
16 September 2022 - 08 January 2023.
As the Flemish fine arts collection finally regains its place in the extensively renovated KMSKA (Royal Museum of Fine Arts), the Flemish Com -
Museum in Motion - Ilya &...
16 September 2022 - 08 January 2023.
Ilya & Emilia Kabakov Ilya Kabakov was born in Dnepropetrovsk — now Dnipro — in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. H
Ensembles
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Collectie Vlaamse Gemeens...
The M HKA holds works on permanent loan that were acquired with the budget of the Vlaamse Commissie voor Beeldende Kunst (Flemish Visual Art
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kunstenaarsboeken uit de ...
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Artist Books
"... They cannot be reduced. They’re not representable. The claim of the complexity of their design is irreducible. They never give the impre
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An Architecture for Art -...
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